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영어

Glaucoma is a secondary irreversible blindness disease in the world.1) Especially, glaucoma mainly caused by high intra-ocular pressure(IOP) that damage to optic nerves, result in blindness. To control the IOP, various methods have been devoloped during about 100 years, such as medications, surgery and drainage device implantation2). Although all of these method have lots of benefit to treat and control the glaucoma disease, cannot to control the IOP in acute glaucoma easily, because these method developed by only focusing on the chronic glaucoma. The failure of control of IOP in the acute glaucoma can cause a drastic blindness because ocular pressure increased rapidly. Hence, an innovative device demanded to control the IOP in acute glaucoma. Here, we fabricate the metallic hollow microneedle with ultra high-aspect-ratio using drawing lithography technology3) to puncture the sclera with minimally surgery.
This metallic hollow microneedle succeeded to control IOP in the glaucoma animal model. We anticipate that this metallic hollow microneedle can be applied for any other ocular disease.